


Shelf Life

by galacticproportions



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, it's been a long time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-05 03:48:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6687991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/pseuds/galacticproportions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leia Organa keeps lists in her head of everything that she does, and has done, and will probably do, that she doesn't want to do. A good many of them involve a body count. Somewhat to her chagrin, fucking Han Solo has never been on any of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shelf Life

**Author's Note:**

> This came from an idea I espied on deputychairman's tumblr, which she kindly gave me the nod to work with here. She's going to do one too and it'll be amazing, like everything she writes.

After the briefing, Han gets ahold of her arm. "Can we talk a minute?"

Leia stops in her tracks, turns like she's posing for her portrait, and puts on an expression that neatly mingles "I'm ready to listen" and "don't waste my time." She does all of this automatically, notes it retroactively while she braces herself to respond to whatever this is.

"Privately," Han says.

She sighs, "Sure," and beckons him after her down the corridor. "What's this?" he asks when they stop in front of a door.

Her hand hovers over the keypad. "My office. Even in the Resistance, a general gets one to herself."

"More private than that."

She turns fully and stares up at him. "You've got to be kidding."

"Why? Why do I have to be kidding?"

His hair is grayer (so is hers), his face more lined (hers too), but the line of his shoulders and the crook of his mouth are the same. That posture that says, "Don't blame me," because he knows that sooner or later, someone will, and they'll be right at least half the time. He adds, "I'm not kidding," as if she didn't know that.

"What if I don't want to?"

Shrug. "Then we won't. You never do anything you don't want to do, everyone knows that. Especially me."

Leia Organa keeps lists in her head of everything that she does, and has done, and will probably do, that she doesn't want to do. A good many of them involve a body count. Somewhat to her chagrin, fucking Han Solo has never been on any of them. She stops a passing aide, says, "Please route all communications to my quarters until further notice," and moves on before she can see whether the woman managed to keep her face professional.

When they close the door behind them, she extricates herself efficiently from her tunic and trousers and underdrawers before he can even touch her. "What's your hurry?" he asks from his seat at the edge of the bed, sounding truly surprised and a little stung.

"I keep my quarters in the command building for a reason. I don't know how long we'll have without interruption, that's all." She walks over to him, feeling her body shift its flesh and weight, planting her feet firmly, walking past guilt and grief and frustration and loss. "Let's get these off you," she says, taking an equally firm grip on that stupid jacket (if he was going to get a new one, why would he get one that looked like the old one?). She gets chilled easily now, but she's damned if she'll say it.

Han draws her in and kisses her sternum and mouths her nipples, biting gently (not too gently) in the way that's turned her spine to water periodically for thirty-plus years. She shucks him out of the jacket and undoes his shirt and breathes in the smell of him, leather and engine room and sweat and highly variable luck.

They kiss and touch for a while in ways that make her forget that a comm could come through any minute, and remember all the other times and places they've done this--just as rushed, just as fervent, just as close to ignominy and defeat and death. Every move has its patina of memory. Eventually they get to a point where she feels she has to caution him, "I don't bend nearly as many ways as I used to the last time we did this. And I don't get as wet anymore, so--"

He pulls away from her, gropes on the floor for his jacket and pulls out a small jar. She's actually surprised. "You cocky son of a--"

"How do you know I haven't been using it?"

"Have you?" It doesn't look like it; it takes him a couple tries to get the lid off.

"Nah." He looks shy, which is quite an accomplishment for a man with gray chest hair and about three-quarters of a hard-on. "I did stop by Lando's a little while back."

 _You should've stuck with Lando,_ she thinks, even as he dips his fingers into the jar first, then into her, even as her breath hisses out. _Someone who always forgives you. Someone who you could forgive._ "Is he, ah, doing all right?"

"He did _me_ all right." Her groan is more exasperation than enjoyment. "He's fine," Han says, moving his hand slowly, watching her face. "How about you? You got anyone? That good-looking pilot?"

She rolls away sharply. "Shara's boy? Han, I changed his diapers!"

"Yeah. Are you still?"

" _No,"_ she snaps, and this is how it always goes. Getting under someone's skin, knowing them as you know yourself--it sounds so good, it sounds like what the holovids are all about. But knowing every sweet and tender place means you know just where a barb can come to rest, just how to hurt. Just when to pull away before the hurt can reach you.

"C'mon back," he says, half-joking, half-pleading. "Hey, listen, speaking of bending, do you still have that--"

Leia laughs, an honest laugh that cracks across the resentment. "Han, those things have a shelf life! The composites start to break down after a while. I threw it out ages ago." She uses her fingers instead, first one than two, pulling on his balls with her other hand while she sucks him and enjoys his moans. Her muscle memory supplies the things she knows he likes, and she wishes it were always this easy. That all of it were just this easy. That this were all there was to remember.

They settle with him behind her and her pelvis propped up on two pillows as the position that'll be easiest on her knees and his back. It takes them a little while to find the right rhythm but it's there, waiting for them, building in them, and when he swears, " _Fuck,"_ as he comes and she clenches around him to draw it out longer, she still feels a tiny, ridiculous tinge of pride.

He knows her, so of course he knows she's not done yet; he disengages and rolls her onto her back and holds her down with one hand on her breastbone, not pushing hard, just a reminder, while he caresses her and watches her face. She comes hard on his hand, groaning in a way she doesn't try to bite back. She wants him to know. To be sure.

After she gets up and pisses they even get to lie together for a little while. With her eyes closed, her hand on his chest and his hand cradling her head, it could be any year. Where they're pressed together, she's warm.

But of course the comm makes its interrogatory beep and she sits up, stands up, answers, framing already a response to the next crisis, feeling already the places where she'll be stiff tomorrow. Wipes herself again with the old underdrawers, finds a clean pair, dresses quickly. She feels him watching her; she hears him not saying anything. "Rest a while here if you want," she says from the doorway. "We still have some time."


End file.
